!!Warning!! - Personal Opinion Ahead (flashing bright red/blue LED's)
There will be "NO" (read: Zero) discussion allowed about retiring the A-10 Warthog until until a viable replacement has been fully approved and is...IN SERVICE! Absolutely ZERO! Period!
That is all.
-------------------------------------------
All this discussion about the A-10 being obsolete, and (x) decades old, and (blah, blah, blah) is nothing more than a smokescreen for a bunch of corrupt politicians to pork barrel another DOD project and dream up some huge, overweight, complex and expensive 'super weapon' which doesn't need to be ANY of those things! The A-10 was successful because it was a tank. It was low and slow, and cheap (in the scheme of things). It was designed for fighting a bunch of back-asswards jihadis in some far away shithole. An enemy who was carrying rusty ass weapons which barely function and armed with weapons they'd cooked up in their garage with some shit from Home Depot. It does NOT need to be able to fight some next generation warrior inside some billion dollar stealth spaceship armed with space lasers, invisible super-powers and unlimited capabilities. It does NOT need to be networked to some mothership, and controlled by some exotic orbiting Battlestar Galactica Death Star staffed with trans-species humanoid LGBTQ+ flag waving retards armed with politically "sensitive" weapons which cost 50 billion dollars each and don't work. And, this is EXACTLY what it WILL be if this discussion is even allowed to get started.
Just NO!
There will be "NO" (read: Zero) discussion allowed about retiring the A-10 Warthog until until a viable replacement has been fully approved and is...IN SERVICE! Absolutely ZERO! Period!
That is all.
-------------------------------------------
All this discussion about the A-10 being obsolete, and (x) decades old, and (blah, blah, blah) is nothing more than a smokescreen for a bunch of corrupt politicians to pork barrel another DOD project and dream up some huge, overweight, complex and expensive 'super weapon' which doesn't need to be ANY of those things! The A-10 was successful because it was a tank. It was low and slow, and cheap (in the scheme of things). It was designed for fighting a bunch of back-asswards jihadis in some far away shithole. An enemy who was carrying rusty ass weapons which barely function and armed with weapons they'd cooked up in their garage with some shit from Home Depot. It does NOT need to be able to fight some next generation warrior inside some billion dollar stealth spaceship armed with space lasers, invisible super-powers and unlimited capabilities. It does NOT need to be networked to some mothership, and controlled by some exotic orbiting Battlestar Galactica Death Star staffed with trans-species humanoid LGBTQ+ flag waving retards armed with politically "sensitive" weapons which cost 50 billion dollars each and don't work. And, this is EXACTLY what it WILL be if this discussion is even allowed to get started.
Just NO!